Regional disparities are the problem of our time but we still don’t take them seriously
Joe Wright, 23 July 2014
Regionalism has become a woolly technocratic term with fading traction in public discourse. It’s a political platitude which switches the disengage button when uttered by politicians. For decades, political parties in the ascendant have promised devolution, but consistently failed to deliver in office. All the while, the economic canyon between North and South (see the ONS image below) erodes deeper. This is the problem or our time. And yet, it commands so little energy and emotion in Parliament, that it is increasingly demoted to backroom talking shops.
It is purely attitude which has created this dearth of imaginative policy. Despite the Heseltine review, the Conservatives have only managed to pull a policy out of the bin, re-insisting the regions need a Boris Johnson to bang their respective drums for business. Meanwhile Labour, under Ed Miliband, focuses on redistributing money to the regions – a New Labour quick fix it ever there was one.
Trust is still a huge problem for Westminster. A former aide to Tony Blair, Patrick Diamond, wrote of Westminster’s attitude to local authorities in his recent Civitas book Transforming the Market: ‘There ought to be a general presumption of competence’, as opposed to the proven incompetence of Westminster on so many issues. It is incongruous to think all political talent resides within Parliament, and even if there was some semblance of truth in this, talent goes where it can feel useful; if power remains in London, then that is where talented politicians will go.
Mistakes are how better policy is made. They are inevitable. At a regional level they will be manageable, instead of forming the next national crisis. The NHS, welfare, education, housing – none are intractable problems; they are just not prioritised region by region. Instead they are treated as homogenous issues.
HS2 (which won’t be ready until 2030) is the singular, solid example of a Westminster nod to regional disparities. But, perversely, whilst being a policy aimed at regional growth it is a perfect example of the problem with centralised planning, missing many opportunities to connect key regions and focusing on links to London. The HS2 project is defined by its connecting the regions with the capital, as though this in and of itself with solve all of the UK’s problems. There is no guarantee it won’t simply speed up the rate of in-migration to London.
But the biggest problem centralisation causes is that it disengages people from politics. Because central government has failed time and time again to find solutions for housing shortages in the South and business shortages in the North, voters feel they have less stock in the outcome of an election. It is precisely this unheeded lesson which has led to Scotland’s serious consideration of throwing in the towel with Westminster.
This is the issue of our time. There should be a Cabinet post, a committee and a government department, all for regionalism.
